Just got my Nak Dragon - Wow

Dear CwLondon,

I don't have any secret master tapes; in fact I haven't even got round to doing any recording yet. (I will however be recording some old reel to reel tapes on my Revox G36 later when I have time). I've just started relistening to our old back catalogue of pre-recorded cassettes that we bought all those years ago. I have just been stunned just how good the deck is. It costs but a fraction (less than 10%) of my vinyl front end.

Listening to the Dragon through the rest of my kit (Tron Meteor tube preamp, Quad IIs and Avantgarde Duos) has been a humbling experience. I never thought cassette could be this good - reel to reel yes, but cassette - surely not! We have all known how good a top vinyl front end can be, but how many of us truly believed in the old compact cassette?

With manual azimuth alignment on the recording head it gets even better when you play back a cassette that you recorded say, off an Lp on this deck as with my ZX-7, pretty impressive. The dragon as I recall may have auto azimuth on the play head. Do you know? Anyway back in the day (1985?) when I bought it a record Lp recorded on a blank cassette would smoke, hands down, the first CDs that started showing up. It took years for the music industry to sort that mess out. Some CDs sound really good these days. It’s about time as they move some of us to new formats yet again. Enjoy!

topoxfordoc

I am actually a big fan of the old Nakamichi products

I had a Nakamichi 250 in my car in high school
an Nakamich LX5 later in one of my favourite systems
and I also had 2 Dragons which I agree are very good

I used to agonize over cleaning records, stylus etc and then try to make great tapes for replay and/or the car

I think an old cassette deck or reel to reel would be great for archiving LPs

just not so sure its worth the time and effort to record digital sources which was my point

Yes I have made many tapes and listened to them while saving my records. I am 43 and if I had not used my tape player so much I would have worn out my records with the cheap TT's I had. Here is the cassette decks I have used. Starting back in 77. $100 Pioneer/$250 JVC 79/$500 2 speed BIC!!81(never would stay aligned) $500 Nak 84/$500 Aiwa in 86/HK TD 4600 in 93/Sony KA3ES in 2000 and finally a Tandberg 3014A in 2004. Cassettes have never sounded so good. Tape deck nut

Well, I'm delighted that others are enjoying old fashioned technology still. I still use LP as my primary source. I don't think I'll be using the Dragon to archive my LPs yet. I really bought it to archive some old 35 year old R2R tapes that I found of my long lost grandad for my grandma, who doesn't understand CDs - she was 90 two weeks ago!!!
So with my 'let's buy something decent hat on', I've ended up with a Dragon and a Revox G36. I haven't used tape sources for 20 years, having been a vinyl addict. Now I can listen to all those pre-recorded tapes that we never threw out in our various house moves.